Where is Toba Tek Singh? A question that historians and countless others
have asked down the years. A story without which any book on partition is
not complete...

Two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of India
and Pakistan that lunatics, like prisoners, should also be exchanged -- that
is, Muslim lunatics in asylums in India should be sent to Pakistan, and Hindus-Sikhs
in asylums in Pakistan transferred to India.

Whether or not this was a reasonable idea, high-level conferences were
held here and there, as decided by the learned, and finally one day a bill
was passed for the exchange of lunatics.

A thorough investigation was undertaken -- those Muslim lunatics who
had relatives in India, were allowed to stay on; others were to be despatched
to the border. Since almost all the Hindus and the Sikhs had left Pakistan,
there was no question of keeping them there; all the Hindu-Sikh lunatics
were to be sent to the border in the custody of the police.

Don't know about what happened out there, but here when the news of
this exchange reached the Lahore asylum, it provided interesting grist
for gossip.

One Muslim lunatic, who for twelve years had been a diligent reader
of the Zamindaar, when asked by a friend, "Maulvi Saa'b, what is this Pakistan?"
replied, after due deliberation: "A place in India where razors are made...".

On hearing this profound observation, his friend was suitably reassured.

Similarly, a Sikh lunatic asked another Sikh lunatic, "Sardarji why
are we being sent to India? We do not know their language..."

The other smiled, "I know the language of these Indians-Shindians. All
they do is strut about, these wicked, puffed up pieces of pomposities!"

One day, while bathing, a Muslim lunatic shouted "Pakistan Zindabad"
so forcefully that he slipped on the floor, fell and fainted.

Some inmates were not really insane. A majority of them were murderers
whose relatives had bribed the officials to admit them into the asylum
so that they could escape the noose.

They had a bit of an idea as to why India had been divided and what
this Pakistan was, but as for the actual events, they too were clueless.
They could not glean much from the newspapers. The guards were illiterate
and ignorant and their conversations weren't very illuminating and edifying
either.

They only knew that there's a man named Mohammed Ali Jinnah, called
the Quaid-e-Azam; who'd created a separate country for Muslims, called
Pakistan.

Where this Pakistan was, what its geographical location was, about this
they did not know anything. Which is why all those lunatics, who were not
completely mentally-imbalanced, were confused whether they were in Pakistan
or in India. If they were in India, then where was this Pakistan? And if
in Pakistan, then how could it be that they, sometime back, living in the
same place, were in India?

One lunatic got so caught up in this whirl of India-Pakistan, Pakistan-India,
that his condition worsened. One day, while sweeping, he suddenly climbed
on to a tree and sitting on a branch, declaimed non-stop for two hours
on this delicate matter of India and Pakistan.

When the guards asked him to climb down, he went up even more. When
threatened, he said, "I don't want to live in India, nor in Pakistan ...
I'll remain on this tree."

After quite some time, when his fit of madness subsided, he climbed
down, and started crying, hugging his Hindu-Sikh friends. He was overwhelmed
with the thought that they would leave him and go away to India.

In an M.Sc-pass Radio Engineer, who was a Muslim and a bit of a stay-away,
given to taking long walks in the garden by himself all day, such a change
manifested itself that he took off all his clothes, handed them over to
an attendant, and took to parading around stark naked.

A fat Muslim from Chaniot, who had been an active worker of the Muslim
League, suddenly stopped bathing fifteen to sixteen times a day as he used
to. His name was Mohammed Ali; but now he proclaimed from his cell that
he was Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Inspired by this, a Sikh lunatic
became Master Tara Singh. Apprehending blood-shed, both were declared dangerous
and locked up separately.

One young Hindu lawyer from Lahore, who had lost his mental balance
after being unrequited in love, became depressed when he heard that Amritsar
had gone to India. He was in love with a Hindu girl from Amritsar who had
spurned him, but he had not forgotten her even in his madness.

He had taken to cursing out all those Hindu and Muslim leaders who had
been responsible for splitting India into two pieces, turning his beloved
into an Indian and him into a Pakistani... When talk of the exchange began,
this lawyer was consoled by many lunatics: he would be sent to India, they
said, the same India where his beloved lived. But he did not wish to leave
Lahore. He felt his practice wouldn't flourish in Amritsar.

There were two Anglo Indian lunatics in the European ward. When they
came to know that the English had left after making India independent,
they were deeply shocked and went into surreptitious, huddled conversations
for hours on the important subject of what their status in the asylum would
now be. Would there be a European ward or would it be done away with? Would
they get breakfast or not? Would they be forced to eat the bloody Indian
chapati instead of sliced bread?

There was a Sikh who had been in the asylum for fifteen years. All he
would speak was this weird gibberish: "Oper di, good good di, annexe the,
bedhyana di, mung di dal of the laltain...".

He would neither sleep at night nor in the day. The guards maintained
that in this period of fifteen years, he had not slept even a wink. He
wouldn't even lie down, though at times he would lean against the wall.
His feet and legs had swollen as a result, but despite physical pain he
wouldn't lay down to rest.

Whenever there was talk of India-Pakistan and the exchange of lunatics
in the asylum, he would listen very attentively. If anybody asked what
he thought, he would solemnly say, "Oper the good good the annexe the bedhyana
the mung di dal of the Pakistan government".

Later, "of the Pakistan government" was replaced by "of the Toba Tek
Singh government" and he took to asking other lunatics where this Toba
Tek Singh (where he was from) was -- in India or Pakistan?

Nobody knew. Those who tried to answer him, would get caught up
in knots themselves. Sialkot, which used to be in India earlier, was now,
they had heard, in Pakistan. Who knew that Lahore, which today was in Pakistan,
would not go to India tomorrow? Or couldn't all of India become Pakistan?
... And who could say this with his hand on his heart that both India and
Pakistan would not disappear from the face of the earth itself some day?

The hair of this Sikh had thinned out and very few remained. Because
he used to bathe very rarely, the hair of his beard and head had become
matted, giving him a frightening look. But the guy was harmless -- he had
never fought with anyone or created a scene in those fifteen years. Old
employees of the asylum knew only this much about him that he owned a lot
of land in Toba Tek Singh. He was an affluent land-lord who had lost his
head suddenly. His relatives had brought him bound and fettered in thick
iron chains.

Once a month, those people would come and visit him. They would find
out about his well-being and leave. This had continued for a long time,
but when the India-Pakistan trouble started, their visits had ceased.

His name was Bishen Singh but everyone called him Toba Tek Singh. He
didn't have a clue what day it was, which month or how many years had passed,
but each month when the time for the visit from his close ones approached,
he would come to know, as if by a sixth-sense.

He would then tell the attendants that his meeting was approaching.
That day he would bathe real well, soap his body, oil and comb his hair,
dress up in those clothes which he didn't otherwise use and be well groomed
to meet his visitors. If they asked him anything, he would remain quiet
or sometimes, occasionally, would come up with, "Oper di, good good di,
annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of the laltain..."

He had a daughter, who gradually, over the months of those fifteen years,
had grown up. Bishen Singh didn't recognise her -- when she was a child,
she would cry on seeing her father; as a grown up, also, tears would roll
out of her eyes.

When the Pakistan-India shebangle started, Bishen Singh began to ask
other lunatics where Toba Tek Singh was. Not getting satisfactory replies,
his irritation mounted day by day. The meetings had stopped too. Earlier
he used to come to know that the visitors were coming. But now, as if,
his sixth sense, the voice of his heart, had also ceased which, in the
past, would inform him about their arrival.

He missed and yearned for those visitors who expressed empathy and brought
fruits, sweets and clothes for him. If only they would come so he could
ask them about Toba Tek Singh. They would definitely tell him whether Toba
Tek Singh was in Pakistan or India -- he thought they certainly came from
Toba Tek Singh, where his land was.

The asylum had a lunatic who called himself God. When one day Bishen
Singh asked him whether Toba Tek Singh was in Pakistan or India he, as
was his wont, just laughed. "It is neither in Pakistan nor in India, because
we have not yet issued our orders on the subject".

Bishen Singh would time and again beg and plead with God to issue his
orders on the subject so that the whole thing would be settled, but God
was very busy, because he had to give a whole lot of other orders.

Fed up, one day, Bishen Singh really lost it and let God have it, "Oper
di, good good di, annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of wahe guruji da
khalsa and wahe guruji di fatah jo boley so nihal sat sri akal". Which
perhaps was meant to imply that he was only a God of the Muslims, for surely
had he been a God of the Sikhs, he would have listened to Bishen Singh.

A few days before the exchange, one of the Muslims of Toba Tek Singh,
who was a friend of Bishen Singh, came to meet him. That Muslim friend
had never visited before. On seeing him, Bishen Singh turned away to go
back but the guards stopped him. "He's come to meet you ... he's your friend,
Fazal Din"

Bishen Singh caught a glimpse of Fazal Din and began to mumble.

Fazal Din stepped forward and put his hands on Bishen Singh's shoulders.
"I had been thinking of meeting you for many days, but remained caught
up. Didn't get free .... all your folks left for India safely ... I helped
all I could ... your daughter Roop Kaur ..." He paused mid-sentence.

Bishen Singh strained his memory. "Daughter Roop Kaur..."

Fazal Din said haltingly, "Yeah, yeah... she too is safe ... went with
them only ..."

Bishen Singh was silent.

Fazal Din began to speak again. "They asked me to enquire after you
...to see to your welfare ... now I have heard you are going to India ...
Say my Salaams to bhai Balbir Singh and bhai Wadhawa Singh... to behan
Amrit Kaur too ... tell bhai Balbir SIngh that Fazal Din is well and safe...
two brown buffaloes they left behind, one of them gave birth to a male
calf ... the other one had a she-calf, but she died after six days.. and...
if there's anything I can do, I am all the time ready .. and, here, I brought
you some rice-crispies..."

Bishen Singh took the bag of rice crispies and handed it over to one
of the nearby guards and asked Fazal Din, "Where is Toba Tek Singh...?"

Fazal Din was surprised. "Where? Why, it is where it has always been!"

The arrangements for the exchange were complete. The lists of the lunatics
to be transferred from here to there and there to here had been swapped.
The date for the exchange was fixed.

It was bitterly cold when the lorries filled with Hindu-Sikh lunatics
left the Lahore asylum under heavy police escort. Concerned officials were
also on the way. Superintendents of the two sides met at the border at
Wagah and after the necessary procedures, began the exchange which carried
on throughout the night.

To take the lunatics out of the lorries and to hand them over to the
other officials was a very difficult task. Some wouldn't come out of the
lorries, and those who agreed to were difficult to control, as they would
start running helter-skelter.

Those that were naked had to be clothed, but no sooner would the clothes
be put on that they would tear them off their bodies. Some were hurling
abuses, some were singing, some were fighting, some were wailing and weeping
-- one could not make out a word, such was the racket they created....
The din created by the women lunatics was something else.

And it was bitterly cold, so cold that teeth clattered.

Most of the lunatics were not in favour of this exchange because they
could not figure out why they were being uprooted from one place and flung
into another. The few who could think and understand a bit, started hurling
slogans such as "Long Live Pakistan" or "Death to Pakistan". Two or three
times a riot was prevented just in the nick of time as some Muslims and
Sikhs had got worked up over the slogans.

Came the turn of Bishen Singh and the concerned official from the other
side of Wagah began to enter his name in the register. He asked, "Where
is Toba Tek Singh? In Pakistan or in India?"

The officer laughed. "In Pakistan"

On hearing this, Bishen Singh jumped to the other side and ran towards
his remaining friends.

Pakistani soldiers caught hold of him and tried to take him back to
the other side, but he refused to move. "Toba Tek Singh is here" He started
yelling out at the top of his voice, "Oper di, good good di, annexe the,
bedhyana di, mung di dal of the Toba Tek Singh and Pakistan..."

They tried reasoning with him. "Look, see, now Toba Tek Singh has gone
to India...and if it hasn't gone, it shall be sent forthwith". But he wouldn't
agree. When it was tried to take him across to the other side by force,
he just planted himself on his swollen legs in the middle in such a manner
as if no force could move him. Because he was considered harmless, not
much force was used. They let him be, left him standing, while the rest
of the exchange-work carried on.

Before sunrise, without any movement, a sky-piercing scream came out
of Bishen Singh's throat.

Many officers came running from here and there and they saw that the
man who had stood, days and nights, on his legs for fifteen years, was
lying collapsed on the ground, face down.